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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Times-Advocate, 1935-08-15, Page 2THURSDAY, AUGUST 15tli, 1935 THE EXETER TIMES-ADVOCATE “SLUMBERING GOLD” BY AUBREY BOYD Speed Malone, hardened gambler, and Ed. Maitland, son of a sea­ faring New England family, were ipartnere in the Yukon gold rush of ”97. They met on the trip north in a crowd that included Frenchy, the fisherman, Lucky Rose, the beautiful girl who took a fancy to Maitland; Fallon, leader of the miners, who re­ sented Rose’s interest in Mait­ land; Brent, old-time prospector; Garnet, who gave Maitland and 'Speed his outfit when h& quit the trial, and Pete and his drunken (partner, Qwens, who was drown­ ed after a brawl. Pete turned out to be a girl in disguise. Speed killed a man at Skagway—a cheap managed of a shell game—and months later was arrested and put in jail for his murder, He got out, but while he waited for Lefty, who offered to help him, to get back the mail he had been carrying for the Mounties at Ben­ nett—'where Drew and Cathcart were stationed—he was recaptur­ ed -by his enemy Fallon. But Maitland and Pete rescued him as Fallon was aibout to lynch him. They made for their camp at Bennett—Pete and Malone |with the horses, by one route, Speed by another. Led by the lead dog, Rusty, they found Dal­ ton’s deserted cabin. The second •morning, Dalton staggered in mortally wounded—and died be­ fore he could tell Pete where the claim was . . . Two Mounties arrest Speed and Maitland for the murder (of which they are inno­ cent) of a Siwash on Lake Le- barge. Garnet defended them at their trial. Cathcart said he had long thought the mysterious Si- wash was a blind for a white prospector who wanted to keep his gold discoveries to himself, and the finding of the dear Si- iwash and the dying Dalton prov­ ed this point. He thought Mait­ land and Speed had known of a letter Dalton had sent to Owens mentioning his gold find. Rose Valery, the singing girl, started her story, and told how she de­ cided to sing in the gold camps when a man who heard her voice told her he was going to Nevada and would take her and give her a steer. Rose Valery, the sing­ ing girl, and a. surprise witness, is now telling her story ’from the stand. NOW GO ON WITH THE ■STORY. I “In Nevada, the woman in the saloon told me my fingering wasn’t so good; took the guitar and eholw- ed me. That interested me a lot. I asked her to have supper with me. “She had -sung in the camps in the Seventies, when mining was a big game on .both sides of the Sier­ ras. In Placerville, on the Califor­ nia side, she had met a young ad­ venturer named Dalton. She took him at first to be a prospector, and he did prospect to some extent. But a litle later, when she became his sweetheart, she learned that he of­ ten took the road with a road agent he called Reeves. They worked the mountain passes, holding up pack trains and wagon shipments of gold till the .country got too hot for them, and they disappeared. “So May’s love amir didn’t last long. I .gathered it was she who did most of the loving. Dalton was a siwaggering young rascal, with a lot of life and goo.v. rooks, and no heart to s'peak of. It was that, I think that attracted ner. She was used to. being courted. “After Dalton left her she had a baby girl. Whether it was his or not, she didn’t know for certain. She’d known him that short a time. It inter.fered with her work, so she sent it away to be cared for, shut it out of her life and forgot about it, as ehe tried to forget about Dalton. “Then she met a rancher named Owens who was taking up a grazing ranch, and went with him to Nevada da, to settle down and be a faithful wife. “Her marriage to Owens was un­ happy. He wa® ungenerous and un­ sociable-*—almost a miser. The ranch was a day’s journey from any neighbor. No one, hardly, came near it. He was jealous of that old life of hers—had suspected, when he married her, what it had been. He worked the ranch himself, so was no one to talk to but him, and he didn’t talk. “One night in summer, when Owens had watered the stock and she was watching him for the ump- tieth time draw a lamp alongside the table, fix the wick and read some month-old newspapers, she heard a faint tapping on the door, She opened it, and there stood a visitor. For her! “A little visitor about three years old, and small for her age, with a cute, solemn baby face, and wet eyes blinking in the lamplight, looking lost. '“ ‘Nice mans said you know where is my Daddy?’ “The woman gave a smothered cry and gathered the child hungrily in her arms, not asking Vet how nor why it had come there. “Owens lit a lantern to go out and see who had brought the little one to the door. The rider was out ot ear­ shot now, 'but on the porch was a sach of gold and a note saying, ‘This baby wandered off a train during a hold-up. Keep heT till the pose comes looking for her. The gold is from the robbed train, and is yourn if you want pay for your trouble.’ “That was all. The rest they tried to piece together from what they could .make of the child’s talk. “For hours Owens pored over that note and over the gold, handling it, counting it ... . And the woman was yearning over the treasure in her arms. Suppose, by some great fall of chance, it was never claim­ ed? “Neither of them slept that night, and the next day they waited and watched the trails. The same hope was in their minds, though their reasons for hoping were far apart. “.Several days passed with no sign of the posse. Finally Owens made a trip to the nearest freight station to get the news. In his absence, the woman started making a lettle suit of overalls for the girl. “Toward sundown she went into the barn to look for eggs for the baby’s supper. While she was grop­ ing for nests in the hay, she caught hold of a man’s hoot. (She didn't scream. The first thought that flashed through her mind was that this was the man whio’d brought the child and the gold. “But the an an sat up and isnriled at her and then her knees almost gave away. It was Dalton—whom she’d never expected to see again. He’d probably learned-she was mar­ ried to the rancher, and had count­ ed on her helping him, if it came to that. “It was his turn to be surprised when she spoke about the child and the gold. He hadn’t had anything to do with leaving them there. But after thinking it over, he told her how it must have happened. “He and the man he called Reeves had been waiting by a lonely stretch of railway track in the desert to stop a (pay train, when a stranger on a bay horse rode by the place they were hiding. He looked like a good gun hand, and they cut him in. During the hold-up the child stray­ ed off the train. When it pulled out and they found her, Reeves (wanted to leave her there. They split on that; the man with the bay horse picked her up and rode south alone, with his share of the loot. Dalton -believed he had happened on Owen’s ranch by letting his horse hunt water. “The other two struck west for the mountains. Dalton’s horse had gone lame, and Reeves took all the gold on his mount to lighten its burden. But it still lagged and when he posse caught their trail Reeves was far ahead and kept go­ ing. Dalton left the lamed horse on some rocky ground, so he would seem to have gone on with Reeves, riding double, and after several days trailing on foot by a round­ about way, came to Owen’s ranch. “As to the .child, Dalton thought it was a bad break to find her there, but he encouraged May’s desire to keep her—since giving her up would ruin his hideout. So the baby had its hair cut, as well as being put in overalls. “Just after May had done this rash thing, Owens came in that night with the news. The posse seemed to have lost the trail of all three of the fugitives, but the father of the missing child hand been kill­ ed in the hold-up, and—worse than that—was a United .State® marshall.’ “The man in the barn had plenty of time to take stock of Owen’e character and of his own position. As the pursuit died away and no word came from Reeves, Dalton re­ alized that his partner .had deserted him. He had also done some think- Diarrhoea Is Weakening Dysentery Is Dangerous Diarrhoea and Dysentery do not need to run for any length of time until the system is weakened and debilitated. Few other diseases so quickly under- mine the strength and bring about a condition of prostration and often collapse. Mover bo without a bottle of Dr. Fowler’s Extract of Wild Strawberry. It is not Only prompt and effective in checking the looseness of the bowels, but at the same time it strengthens, stimulates and braces up the system. you do not experiment when you get ''Dr, Fowler’s”. It has been on the market for the past 00 years, Do not accept a substitute. ing about the way the posse had been mistracked. “Dalton proposed staying at the ranch as a hired man until the trail was cold, and calling himseLf the father of the little ‘boy.’ The very daring of the scheme would protect them. “Though the police had given up hope of finding the lost child, there was no slacking in the hunt for the three road agents involved in the killing of the Federal marshal, and Dalton knew that there iwould be none. “Deciding to leave the country, he demanded a grubstake from Owens, to take him prospecting in the North. The rancher grudged the money, but was anxious- to get rid of him. “Owen’s jealousy got worse after the man was gone. In his brooding rages, he spoke of Dalton’s willing­ ness to appear as the child’s father as if that were a deeper sign of un­ derstanding .between them. His fury drove him to charges that may have (bordered on a truth he didn’t know. “He .gave her such a terrible time that she finally left him and her adopted baby, and -went back to her old life, where I found her, in the dregs of it, “Some years later I came into Carson City, just before the rumor broke about the big gold strike in the North. And there the thing happened that begins to tie this up with------” Fallon, twisting is his chair, caught her eyes now, squarely. “You don’t dare-----*” he blurted but with a dark menace. “Do you dare threaten a witness in Her Magesty’s Court?” Judge Dugas demanded. 'Muttering something, Fallon bit his tongue and waited. “I was crossing a planked side­ walk,” continued Rose, “when I almost bumiped into a man stepping down from the porch of the Nevada Hotel. His .face came back to me 0ver a long gap of time as well as distance. He’d changed some. I passed him blank/ “We met again in a place where I sang, and he invited me to drink something. I did, because it was rather funny to talk to a maw who’d tricked me with April Fool candy the way he’d done and not be' re­ membered. “So I said, ‘Your face looks kind of familiar. Hoven’t I seen it tacked up in the post ofice or some­ where?’ “He almost jumped. I hadn’t had a notice how near the truth a reward poster might be. When I smiled, he gave a laugh that sound­ ed flat. “. ‘You’ve got the start on me, balby,’ he said, patting my hand. ‘The nearest I ever come to im­ aginin’ you was a fool kid I met once in Frisco. You’re pretty wise and you’ve been' around. Maybe as a woman, you can answer a ques­ tion that got me curiuos once. It just come into my mind. Do you believe a girl could be brought up as a boy (without anyone on the out­ side guesein’ it?’ “ ‘It depends on the girl and the surroundings,’ I said, still not sus­ pecting anything in particular. ‘I think it could happen, but I wouldn’t bet on a particular case without seeing the -boy you suppose to be a girl.’ “ ‘Well, you’ll never see him,'” Fallon said, a little too offhand. “It just come into my mind.’ " “He started his meaningless love­ making again and I left .him. “What he’d said chimed with something else in my memory. Though I didn’t recall right at first what it was, I kept looking as I played the camp for a bioy wiho might not be so boyish except for the -clothes. The only one I noticed was a boy with gold hair. He didn’t look girlish—wore his clothes, I mean, as if he had a right to them. But it struck me that I could have dressed him up a® a stunning girl, and it was a crime to see .hair like his wasted on a boy. He was with an older, wisky-faced man I’d never seen in the camp® before and whose name I learned to be Owens. The man was buying an outfit to go to Alaska. “Owens are uncommon, but it was the name of the rancher May had married, and with that I remem­ bered, in. a sihock of understanding, that the child left at the ranch house had blonde hair and had been dres­ sed as a boy. “Dalton had gone North. Owens had staked him. A man like May’s Owens wouldn’t make that trip Jwithout a solid lead to go on. I remembered his passion for gold. Dalton must have made a strike and sent for him. “Certain this was the ®ame man. I wondered how much Fallon had guessed. Maybe he just suspected a girl in boy’s clothes and was curi­ ous, She was young and innocent, and he liked them that way. Her. name, ‘Pete’ was a boy-like as pos­ sible, but since it didn’t fit her ap­ pearance, it was a kind of give­ away.” - The chortling voice of the river rippled through the silence as Rose paused. Speed leaned on- the bar of the prisoners’ dock, intently watching her across the red-coated shoulder of the police guaTd. Fab Ion half-reclined in his chair, in a smouldering silence-—the sheathed fire of one who holds a final answer in reserve. “That same night, the big Yukon news came down on the wires from Seattle. Prospectors who had been waiting and ready were pulling stakes for San Francisco and the first steamers; Owens beat the gun by starting ahead of them and showed that he’d had a definite lead on something. “I caught the train- for Seattle and overtook Fallon’s steamer there. He was wary ©nought to keep Otwens out of my way. Pete avoided me of her own accord. My talking to“ Fallon may have given her the idea I was a friend of his, and she mis­ trusted him 'by instinct. “Fallon started the rancher Owens drinking and gambling—a first sign that he had guessed true about the gold. That it was true, I made sure in a more direct way.” Wade rose to object. “Your Honor,” he said, “I have listened to the witness’s vivid story without offering an objection until noiw, I feel it my duty, as counsel for the Crown, to object to it as theoretical and move that it be thrown out.”’ Judge Dugas looked reflectively at Rose. “How did you prove, Miss Valery, that there was a gold mine at stake?” (Continued next week) One million dollars is the cost each year of staging the Canadian National Exhibition and that does not include the amounts spent by exhibitors which are beyond estimate The Ball Room at the Canadian National Exhibition' offers the latest innovation® in dance floor construc­ tion. The enormous expanse of waxed flooring accommodation for two, thousand dancers at one time. ANNOUNCEMENT The engagement is announced of Sarah Isabel, ony daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Miskimins, Port Arthur, to Irving Webster McNaugh­ ton, M.A., second son of Mr. and Mrs. John McNaughton of Kippen. T.he marriage to take place the mid­ dle of August. REYNOLDS CLAN HOLDS OUTING AT SPRINGBANK Members of the Reynods clan numbering 63 gathered in Spring­ bank Park for their first family re­ union and Horatio Reynolds was elected to the presidency of the fam­ ily for the coming year. Other offi­ cers elected at the business session were secretary-treasurer Mrs. Luther Reynolds; grounds and sports com­ mittee, Edith Josling, Hartley Man­ aghan, Mr. and Mrs, Charles Mur­ ray, Harold Josling. It was decided to hold the 193 6 reunion in Spring­ bank Park on Civic Holiday. The oldest man present was Geo. Josling, Clinton; the oldest woman, Mrs. C. Pope, London; youngest child, Janet Ruth Marshall, three months, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Marshall, London. Guests were present from Londes- b'oro, Clinton, Exeter, London, Bel­ mont, Walkerville, Windsor, De­ troit, .St. Agnes and Newberry, Mich. The winners in the sports events were: children under 5, Fred Mar­ shall, Janet Kestle, Edna Ball, Hel­ en Ball, Betty Managhan; (boys 8 to 12, Billy Reynolds, Billy Marshall; girls 8-12, D. Marshall, Shirley Marshall; young women, E. Josling, Edith' Marshall; married women, Mrs. Norman Wright, Mrs. Hartley Managhan; married men, Victor Kestle, G. * Ferguson; peanut scramble, B. Marshall, C. Marshall; neck tie race, Charlie Murray and Edith Josling, Roland Kelly and Mrs. C. Managhan; women throwing ball, Mrs. T. Managhan, Mr®. H. Jos- •ling; biscuit eating, Harold Josling, Clarence Managhan; finding mystery woman, H. Reynolds; looping the loop, .Edith Josling’s team; fitting slipper, H. Josling, Lloyd Reynolds; clothes pin race, Shirley Marshall, Edith Josling-; kicking the slipper D. Marshall, C. Kelly; Maggie and Jiggs, Mrs. E. Marshall; picnic bas­ ket, H. Reynolds team; dodge ball Elgin Josling, Hilda Marshall; guessing contest, Mrs. C. , Murray; kicking slipper, H. Reynolds, V. Kestle, Charlie Murray’s side won in the tug-of-war. ISAAC FAMILY REUNION HELD AT SPRINGBANK The 5th annual picnic of the Isaac family was held at Springbank Park. A sport program was run off with results as follows:'Tots race, Rose Lanahan, Lorene MaeEwen, Gerald Isaac; young ladies, Mrs. R. Isaac, Betty Brown, Mrs, Wm, MaeEwen; young mens, Glen Robinson, Bill MaeEwen, Walt Lenahan; men’s ra’ce Ivan Isaac, Russell Isaac, Gerald Isaac; balloon .race, Mrs, Bill Mac- EWen and Ivan Isaac, Mrs. Walt Lenahan and Glen Robinson; barn­ yard scramble, Ivan Isaac and Nellie Milligan, Grant Milligan and Betty Brown, Bill MaeEwen and Mrs. R. Isaac; molding contesit, Mrs. Andrew Isaac and Morris Isaac, Mrs. W. Sweet and Glen Robinson; kicking the slipper, Mrs. R, Isaac, Mrs. W. [Lenahan; chewing the rag, Mrs. W. Sweet, Mrs. E. MaeEwen; beauty con­ test, Mns, J. Ford and Mrs. W. Sweet SuppeT was served, followed by a short business meeting, The newly elected officers are: Gordon Ford of Flint, Mich., president; Elma Is­ aac, London, vice-pres.; William MaeEwen, London; secretary-treais. Sports committee, Gerald Isaac con­ venor; Harold Hodgins, Lucan, Mrs. Harold Hodgins, Bidduliph. Lunch committee, Mrs. Alton Isaac, conven­ or; Mrs. W. Lenahan, Mrs. Harvey Isaac, Mrs. W. Ma'cE'wen, Mrs. H. Ford and Mrs. D. P. McCalum. The next year the family reunion will be held at Charlie Isaac’s Spruce Grove, Centralia, on the Saturday before Labor Day, September 5. ■k i f 9^ DIED IN NEW YORK STATE Dr. John W. Roes, died recently in Cohoes, N.Y. Dr. Ross was born in Seaforth where he received his early education'. Survivors include his wife and daughter and one sis­ ter Mrs. Archibald Scott of Seaforth lOc WHY PAY MORE Best of all fly killers. Clean, quick, sure, cheap. Ask your Drug­ gist, Grocer or General Store. 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